The next-tech metaverse workplaces of tomorrow

Are you ready for the next-tech workplace revolution of tomorrow?

Maybe? Yes? Not really?

You are not alone. Many people are still reeling from previous COVID-19 workplace transformations. However you think about it, the fact is that the next workplace revolution is coming sooner than you might think and yes, the metaverse will – in a sense – support the next medium for our employees to work in.t

The metaverse workplace of tomorrow will provide an always-on, dynamic and more personalized than ever before “embodied” experience for employees. The lines between digital and physical work and personal life will continue to blur, and the duality of technology will create new challenges that we don’t even understand yet. The metaverse will also provide innovative ways to connect people, increase efficiency, and improve knowledge sharing like we’ve never seen before.

And it’s already happening. Companies like Accenture are already figuring out how to operate in a metaverse continuum and have deployed the technology at scale due to COVID-19, even onboarding of new employees in the metaverse. Companies will form new innovative partnerships to invent new things, such as Siemens and NVIDIA’s venture to create a industrial metaphor.

Skeptical? Remember the ‘new’ smartphones?

I know some of you may cringe at the thought of a metaversely charged workplace ecosystem, viewing it as a fad that will fade, while others smile at the new market opportunities that await your industry.

Let’s take a quick trip back in time. Think of the time when the first smartphones were launched. No keyboard and just a screen to interact with? Many thought it was a trend that would never catch on. But in just a few short years, that “trend” evolved to more than 6 billion people interacting with information and the internet, transforming business models and how workers in most industries work – and how they live.

Before the smartphone disrupted the way people interacted, jobs revolved around the time people spent in the office, without expecting them to work when people weren’t physically in the office. The smartphone became an extension, leading to new workplace policies for its use, for example by Ford Motor Company Bring your own device initiatives — and the new always-connected work culture emerged.

These enhancements redefined work from “a place you go for a set time of day” to “cutting the cordage of desks and giving people the freedom to use innovative productivity tools and new virtual spaces to work anytime, anywhere, anywhere. meeting.”

This sparked the digital transformation of businesses in the early 2010s and sparked a major shift in how companies use technology to advance business opportunities, grow and retain talent, and control where and when people work.

Why you need to prepare now

If we examine the trends of the latest major internet evolution, business leaders most likely have between 5 and 10 years to prepare for the next wave of digital change. This is given the current pace of development, maturity, and confluence of the seven key technologies that make up the metaverse: AI; block chain; computer technology; augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies; simulation and gaming technologies; next generation communications networks; and sensor technology.

These technologies will enable the next human-centered Internet transformation – the metaverse – and redefine how companies do business and how people work. The metaverse will likely see behavioral changes similar to the smartphone transformation of the mid-2010s, which changed the way people lived and worked, mixing their digital and physical worlds in unimaginable ways.

The metaverse provides a new lucrative marketplace for businesses, employees, and consumers. Companies will need to develop new operating models, talent strategies and infrastructures to support evolutionary change at scale if they are to maintain a competitive talent and business advantage.

A McKinsey report finds that by 2030, the metaverse could be worthwhile $5 trillionpotentially presenting a significant new growth opportunity for many retail, financial services, technology, manufacturing and healthcare companies.

When we look to tomorrow Deloitte experts estimate that the metaverse is likely to depend on consumer response and four key undetermined factors – standardization, market fragmentation, user interface, and governance – likely leading to three possible scenarios for the metaverse by the early 2030s. These are:

1. Low trajectory: a specialized market for specific applications that will complement but not replace other technologies;
2. Double Star: A mainstream market for many applications, but divided among the next generation of leading platforms.
3. Big bang: The complete migration from today’s internet and more to an immersive world where most businesses and consumers operate.

Considering previous trends with technological advancement and workplace transformation, we can narrow down the future metaverse workplace to at least two plausible outcomes: A specialized or communal workplace in the next 3 to 5 years.

Specialized workplace for some

Companies build specialized metaverse platforms to support specific users for specific tasks that support other technologies. For example, a company can build a digital replica of its supply chain to better understand vulnerabilities, risks and opportunities.

Only limited use is made of specialized workers and it is not integrated into the day-to-day activities of employees. For example, designers, architects, and engineers could work in a metaverse workspace to conceptualize or virtually build cars, cities, or infrastructures to better understand efficiencies and vulnerabilities prior to real-world fabrication.

Common workplace for many

Companies are developing dynamic metaverse workspaces to provide their entire workforce with new options to conduct many business activities, collaborate, and participate in proprietary and partitioned digital-physical ecosystems. This can make employees more efficient, provide more flexibility in the workplace and create new business opportunities.

The common business metaverse will bridge the real and the virtual, with employees located across both workspaces. For example, the entire workforce can be collectively present at a town hall or training session by physically being in the room or accessing it digitally from anywhere using extended reality technology, a mobile device or a PC.

More collaboration, involvement

As the development of the basic technologies of the metaverse are at different stages of development, many technological factors, as well as social and business norms, can change the way the future unfolds.

However the metaverse workplaces of tomorrow become a reality, they will provide more combined digital and physical spaces that provide people with a shared and connected experience no matter when, how or what device they use to engage in their work. Some companies will switch to results-oriented models of work in which employees’ compensation is focused on results and performance, not on the number of hours they work per day.

The metaverse workplace offers more collaboration and engagement and more opportunities to gain insights for growth and development. It will also provide additional support for well-being and connectedness.

Companies will also see new points of friction and workforce challenges similar to smartphone adoption and the move to remote work during the pandemic. As with anything, there will be growing pains – as well as tremendous opportunities.

Kayla Lebovits is CEO and founder of Bundle benefits.